His fingers drummed over the top of the brass doorknob. When he moved in, there was sort of a rich luster to it - not the glare of something shiny and new, but rather the look of something well-worn, and well-cared for. Now most of the brass had rubbed off, or tarnished - whatever brass does. So many times that door had been opened and closed - in surprise, in relief, in jubilation. It had been slammed shut and flung wide in anger and frustration almost as much. And the whole time, no one thought to polish the doorknob.

Had it been any other day, Michael would have been content to stand in the same place for hours, postponing the inevitable. But it had been a long, stressful day on top of a sleepless night and he just wanted to go in and lay down. The door was already unlocked - he needed only to turn and push. Simple.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the door - but stood still at the entrance. He was surprised to see the window across the room propped up by a small stick. It wasn’t open when he left - in fact, he’d always thought it was painted shut. Now with somewhere to go, the stagnant air flew out of the room, chased by the sweet, clean scent of jasmine flowers. Michael closed his eyes and inhaled, his fears confirmed. She was gone.

*~*

"C’mon, Michael," Maria walked over to him, adjusting her earring. "We’re late."

"I don’t want to go," he replied in a flat monotone, fixated on the television.

"They’re our friends."

"They’re *your* friends."

Sitting on the arm of the couch, she sighed. "They can be your friends too. Let’s just go out… I *need* to get out of this apartment." Frowning, she turned and touched him on the shoulder tenderly.

He shrugged her off. "I’m not stopping you."

"I can’t do this anymore." Shaking her head, Maria got up and stormed across the room.

Michael watched her intently - pulling her jacket on, rifling through her bag, the never-ending search for her keys. He knew that he should go with her, even a simple ten minute appearance would make her happy. But something was keeping him pinned to the couch, and when she turned around, he looked back at the television.

She stood in his line of view, hands on hips. "Come with me," she asked softly. "We can come home early, but let’s just go out for a little while."

"I don’t want to go," he repeated, harshly spitting every word out. The tug-of-war in his head was getting harder. He didn’t want to hurt her, but it seemed like causing her pain was the only thing that made him feel alive anymore. By this point in their relationship, he knew which buttons did what, and for the past few months, he just pushed the heartbreak ones. As long as he didn’t look up at her to see what his words were doing, he could keep dulling the pain.

"I won’t come back."

Michael swallowed hard. "Go."

*~*

All her things were gone - the odd trinkets and such that she had left in his apartment over the years. The dog-eared John Irving novel was no longer on the nightstand beside the bed. Also gone was the pile of ‘chick flick’ movies that had made its home on top of the VCR. She had taken the embroidered pillow from the couch, the rarely-worn sneakers that had taken up residency in his closet and the pink parasol-umbrella that she’d left after that freak storm.

That was something he’d nearly forgotten about. It was about a year ago - Roswell had been suffering from a drought that seemed to last forever. It had gotten so bad that the state began enforcing strict water rations for everyone. Then one day, almost out of nowhere, it hit - a torrential rainstorm that held the small town hostage. It had somehow managed to sneak in under everyone’s radar, and most people lost power for days - Michael was no exception.

Maria had shown up shortly after it began, drenched to the bone. She stood underneath this enormous pink atrocity which had obviously done nothing to protect her from the elements. Upon finding his little drowned rat, Michael tugged her inside, not able to contain his smile.

Just as he finished toweling her off, the power went out. Wrapped in blankets, they curled up on the couch, feeding each other marshmallows and talking for hours. Now that he thought of it, that was probably the last time they were truly happy together.

But the umbrella was gone, as were the barrettes and brushes from the bathroom. Her toothbrush and shampoo were replaced with the ones he’d left at her house. A realization hit him, and Michael quickly ran over the inventory of his apartment anew. The sketchbooks, which had claimed a permanent home on her coffee table, were now setting up shop on his. The t-shirt she slept in - he’d forgotten it one night - was now washed and folded, sitting in his top drawer.

Not only had Maria taken all her things, but she returned all of his. Not in a spiteful pile on his bed, or haphazardly tossed in a box to be thrown on the kitchen table, but tucked into his apartment as if they’d never left. As if their lives had never intertwined.

*~*

The first night he spent in some girl’s bed. He turned and walked out, and kept going until he ended up in some random bar. As much as he would have loved to drown his sorrows, Michael feared that the alcohol would have just dragged him back to Maria’s place. He was sitting in the corner drinking water when she approached him. She was definitely attractive, with bright blue eyes and long black hair that cascaded down her back. But he didn’t really pay that much attention to her until she invited him home.

The whole thing was a blur. Kissing, groping, licking, tugging - he felt nothing. Michael closed his eyes and was grateful that he didn’t have to make constant conversation. To her - all that mattered was that he was there. To him - all that mattered was that he was not in his bed.

The second night was spent at Max’s. On the couch, fixing his tunnel vision on the tv set for hours. When he lived with Hank, Michael had quickly learned to tune out the constant droning. But living alone had retrained his mind, and he used the flashing images as welcome distraction to the madness in his brain.

Max didn’t say much, just got some blankets from the closet and offered him food. Maybe he already knew Maria left him, maybe she’d gone running to Liz, who had in turn gone running to Max. However, there was something in the way Maria was that night that made Michael doubt she’d react like that. Either way, Max didn’t mention a thing and Michael was not forthcoming with any information.

He needed to be in a place that didn’t remind him of Maria. Where he couldn’t catch sight of a short blond walking down the street, where the light scent of her oils wouldn’t drift past him or infiltrate his clothes, where he wouldn’t hear people arguing passionately for the whole world to see. Surprisingly, it had been three days and he managed to stay in his own little world. For, as integral as she was to his life, he knew how to avoid her, and she knew how to be avoided.

The third night he headed out to the desert - when he was younger, Michael had hiked it so much that the layout was virtually etched into his mind. It was his solace, his escape when the world became much too intense for him. Once he’d taken Maria out here, and after a while it seemed as if she understood. Why he was drawn to the vast nothingness… in the middle of the night, and when it was particularly starless, all the boundaries and borders disappeared. If it wasn’t for gravity, Michael wouldn’t be able to tell if he was walking on the ground or the sky. It was where he could close his eyes and listen to the world move, and lose himself in all that was around him.

The fourth night, he found himself back at the same bar. That same girl found him there, too. Even less small talk was made before they returned to her bed.

The fifth night - the same. Only this time they stopped in a coffee shop on the way to her apartment. The girl, drunk and giddy, was a bit too loud for the place - being that it was mostly filled with students preparing for finals. She flirted with the boy behind the counter, making him describe everything in the pastry case.

Embarrassed, Michael stepped away from them and began to study some flyers on the opposite wall. Quickly tiring of that, he did a quick scan around the room - and saw her.

Curled up in one of the large arm chairs sat Maria, mindlessly running her finger over the rim of her mug. He watched as she turned a page, taking the pen from her mouth to underline some pertinent passage. Placing the pen on the small table next to her, she took a small sip from her cup, eyes never leaving the book. As she replaced the cup, the table wobbled slightly and she looked up for a brief moment. It was long enough.

His jaw dropped when she caught him staring, and he felt his breath catch when she kept his gaze. Her eyebrows wrinkled, almost imperceptibly, in confusion. No one else would have caught it - he’d seen it pass by Liz’s notice many times - but Michael had spent so much time studying her face, learning which delicate signals were caused by what emotion.

He wanted her to say something, anything. She didn’t have to ask him to come home, she didn’t even have to be nice. In fact, what he really wanted was for her to yell at him… just get in his face and scream. Maybe that would break him out of the stupor he was floating in, make him crash back down to Earth. His eyes pleaded with her, begging her to open her mouth and say something. But she only closed her eyes, and shook her head. If he was closer, he would have heard her let out a slow, pained breath before she went back to reading her book.

Michael let go of the breath he’d been holding hostage himself. Once again, he didn’t do the thing she needed him to - he didn’t go to her and be the first to talk. Maria didn’t look up at him again, almost as if she’d been spooked by an apparition, and feared what would happen the next time. Head hung low, he walked back to the girl from the bar, letting her drag him to her home.

*~*

The sixth night, he forced himself to stay home. Max’s place was still an option, but Michael was in a self-punishment mode. He was disgusted with himself for his actions, it was almost as bad as Hank trying to drink his problems away.

Besides, this was a period of time when he sat and stewed over the things he had done, things he should have done, things he needed to do. Or, at least that’s what all her girlie magazines told him. He was supposed to figure out what he did wrong, and find a way to rectify the situation. Only, he didn’t know if he wanted to. She was right to leave him - and he could not come up with one decent reason why she should return. Without him, she would get her sparkle back.

He wasn’t sure when he first noticed that it was gone. That thing that made her Maria. Of course, she was still Maria, but in some ways, less so. Maybe it was when she started giving into him, letting him get his way. She knew something was going on with him, and played the role of the supportive girlfriend perfectly. Michael honestly could not have asked for a better friend. Something in him reacted so adversely to that love, though, and the more warm and caring she became, the more cold and hardened he grew.

Maybe it was the night when he found her crying the bathroom. He never heard her get up, never felt her leave the bed, and probably wouldn’t have even known if an unbearable thirst hadn’t forced him to the kitchen. On his way back, a small, stifled noise got his attention, and he stopped by the bathroom to check it out. There she sat, on the toilet, scrunched into a ball, biting on her fist to keep her sobs quiet. Without a word, he picked her up and took her back to bed, stroking her hair until she fell asleep.

Then one day, she stopped arguing. *That* got his attention. There was no big deal made about it, no announcement about how she was the bigger person and was refusing to fight. It was more like she was tired - tired of the back-and-forth, never going anywhere discussions that they were having about everything from their relationship to what kind of sauce to buy for dinner.

But he missed her voice. Her non-stop chatter that he always claimed to drive him insane. Her surprisingly deep, sultry voice that she would use when trying to talk him into something. Her quiet lilting voice, when he would lay in her lap and she would sing to him. Her, at times screeching, intensely angry voice. Closing his eyes against the light of the setting sun, he concentrated, trying to remember the moment when she last yelled at him.

*~*

"I can’t pretend to be asleep anymore!" she wailed, fists bearing into her temples.

"What are you talking about?" Michael growled back, secretly happy that he was able to draw the reaction he wanted from her. The distance between them was getting worse and worse, and he knew that he was the one to blame. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, need her, want her… all those things were as natural as breathing to him. But breathing only kept him alive, it didn’t make him feel like he was actually *living.* It almost felt like some sort of numbness was trickling through his body, causing him to lose all his senses. Lately, the only thing that he could feel was pain - and he felt that by hurting her, vicariously poking the pin through his own skin.

"You know what I mean." Her voice softened, and her words slowly dawned on him. The thing they never spoke of, no matter how heated the argument, how in depth the conversation. She knew that he didn’t want to talk about it, and the fact that she was bringing it up… Michael hadn’t realized just how bad things had gotten.

One night, in her bed, he sat up abruptly, gasping for air. Maria woke up, and threw her arms around him, trying to calm the wracking coughs that filled his body. Everything about it was excruciatingly painful - and he didn’t know if it was from his inability to force air into his lungs, or from her trying to soothe him. Even her touch seemed to sear his skin, and he twitched away from her involuntarily.

The next morning he lied, and said that it was the first time it had ever happened. After a month, she stopped trying to help him, when it was obvious that he wanted to be left alone. Strangely enough, that was when he went to her for comfort. When his breathing would return to normal, he’d lay back down and stare at the ceiling, listening to her nocturnal murmurings. Then the urge would hit, the uncontrollable need to be next to her, to feel her.

Michael would roll over and curl up around her body, his arms crushing her to his chest. The first time he did this, Maria had to make a conscious effort not to gasp when he pressed his lips to the base of her neck. He never did any more than that, and she learned that that the quicker he thought she was asleep, the sooner he’d come to her. Under any other circumstances, and for any other person, she would not have put up with so much pain. But she loved him, and had loved him for so long, that she knew something was tearing him apart from the inside.

So, Maria would lay awake all night, pretending to be asleep just so that he could relax and fall into slumber. In time, it was like she was always in a constant state of pretending - to be someone she wasn’t or somewhere she wasn’t. Liz noticed it, but gave up trying to talk to her about it. Alex teased her, but his jokes were easily blown off. It was the one she needed most that never saw how she was drowning, never threw her a life preserver. So in his face, Maria threw the one thing she knew would get to him. And then she walked out.

*~*

The seventh night, he found himself standing in front of a closed door again, only this time it wasn’t his key that would open it, and it would take a lot more than just turning the knob and pushing it open. Michael knocked, and immediately dug his hands into his pockets, as if to deny what he’d just done. He heard the footsteps and the lock clicking open. Somehow, she didn’t seem surprised to find him there.

Maria crossed her arms over her chest and sighed, waiting for him to say something. There were small dark circles around her eyes, but he couldn’t tell if they were new, or had been there for a while. She always seemed to be so tired, although now she appeared to be a lot less frail than the last time he’d seen her. The sparkle was still gone though, buried deep below the dulling pain that now shielded her from the world. He ached for her, ached for the fact that she was no longer the girl he stole away on a trip to Marathon, no longer the girl who took him in no questions asked and let him sleep in her arms all night, no longer the girl that flashed him from across the Crashdown on an insanely busy day. And he knew that he was the reason she was no longer that girl. Staring down at the floor, he shifted his weight back and forth until he knew he could no longer stay silent. Michael exhaled slowly, then looked into her eyes.

"I, um, I just wanted you to know… that I, um… that girl, I mean…"

"I know," Maria said abruptly.

"You know?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"That you didn’t cheat on me. I know. I know that when you were with me, you were with *me.*" Every word was said matter-of-factly, without accusation. "Only," she paused, biting her lip, "We really haven’t been together in quite some time, have we, Michael?"

Wincing, he looked away, out at the street. A man struggling with some bags nodded a hello, then continued on his way. Suddenly realizing that the people walking by were completely able to listen in on their conversation, Michael turned back to Maria. "Can we go inside and talk?"

"No."

"No?"

"No." Maria stated again firmly. "Because you’ll say things without saying anything, and we’ll end up in bed because it’s easier than making half-hearted conversation across the kitchen table. But in month we’ll be right back here, in this doorway, having this same conversation, and I just don’t have the strength for it anymore."

He covered his face in his hands, pressing his fingertips into his eyelids. She was… right. They had spun around in the same vicious circle over and over again, and each time it only got that much harder to return to something with a semblance of normality. She loved him, she always would - and he knew that. And there was no doubt that he loved her back, but the damage between was almost irreparable. He straightened himself and tried to come up with an easy exit from an impossible situation.

As soon as he dropped his hands, she lunged for him, taking his face in her palms. Her thumbs slid quickly across his cheeks and her lips found his a split second later. Maria didn’t want to savor the moment, to remember his face. She already knew what he looked like, and the Michael standing in front of her was not the one she wanted to remember. He looked like the one she loved, but underneath that beautiful exterior was a virtual stranger, and one she couldn’t be with anymore.

Not allowing herself to think, Maria kissed him voraciously - like a woman about to embark on a hunger strike. He wrapped one arm around her waist and the other hand in her hair, and together they fell against the doorframe, never breaking contact. Her hands moved around his face, her fingertips gliding over the soft skin of his temples, his eyelids, his cheeks and down to his neck. Every breath she let out he took in, letting it warm his soul. It was if, in one moment, the black void which had been devouring him bit by bit let go… and let him be happy.

A random stranger walking by probably would have smiled, assuming it to be a reunion of two lovers who had been separated too long by time and space. Or perhaps the joyous celebration of a proposal, a sweet homecoming, or a surprise visit. But they would be wrong, Michael thought as Maria broke away from him, staring into his eyes as she reluctantly let her fingers pull away from his.

He knew what this was, he thought as she stepped back and closed the door. This was good-bye.

Explanations

Tugboat Annie

if I caught you fading into static

would you try to put me away

when I tried to keep you back from breaking

when we were afraid

and I can’t see above it - what I have to do

all this explanation covers up the making

covers up the time is takes to go

into the familiar

I can’t make you leave me

But I can make you cry

If you saw me falling would you watch me or

Would you go away?

And when I got my balance would you hear me

Would you let me explain?

And I can’t find a way to break this wall again